We have been puzzled by the appearance of a mystery plant in the Centenary Plantation this spring. Initially the plant apeared as on the left with a possible white petal-less flower between two leaves the shape of elephants ears. After a few days the central bud opened out into a pair of fairly standard toothed oval leaves (see right). This proved that the original leaves were seed leaves (or cotyledons) but there were lots of possibilities for oval leaves - Cherry, Hornbeam, etc. Luckily the second one I tried searching for hit gold - see the attached link. They are Beech seedlings:-)

The
galleries below show a selection of the plants to be found in Selsdon Wood. These are organised in groups listed alphabetically.

We have a booklet entitled "Selsdon Wood Nature Reserve - Its history and Management: Some records of Flora and Fauna"
which was produced in 1978 by Jack Penry-Jones on behalf of the Croydon
Natural History and Scientific Society. This contains species lists for that year. More recent observations began in 2010, since when most of the photographs have been taken.

Species that have not been photographed in Selsdon Wood are listed in red. If you can find any of them and send us a photograph we would
love to hear from you:-)

Trees and Shrubs

A full list of the 39 species of tree/shrub in Selsdon Wood with an outline of their locations can be downloaded from here. We have also produced a more detailed Tree Spotters Guide for species. These are available as downloadable pfs from the following links. See also the Schools page of the website for child-friendly information about some of the most common trees.

We also have a guide to the identification of trees in winter by their bark which can be downloaded from here.

Flowering Plants

Photographs in the galleries below show more than 130
of the flowering plants found in Selsdon Wood - listed in alphabetical
order of common name. All have been taken within our wood - dates
given in the captions. There are a number of species which we believe can be found in Selsdon
Wood but we have not yet been able to find or photograph them.
These are shown in red on the alphabetical lists at the top of each
gallery. If you can find any of them and send us a photograph we would
love to hear from you:-)

A full check-list of all the flowers found in Selsdon Wood can be downloaded from the link below. This has information about the months in which the plant is in flower, the location and the years in which it has been observed.

Non Flowering plants include ferns, mosses and liverworts and are very difficult for amateurs to identify.However we are delighted to
report that we were contacted in March 2014 by a Danish biologist, Mogens
Holmen, who had visited our wood in February while on a visit to friends in the
UK. He supplied a list of mosses
and liverworts that he had identified in Selsdon Wood and corrected all of our
original identifications!! After later visits in May 2014 and February 2015 he added many more identifications
and photographs.Sightings or photographs new this year (2015) are shown in bold.

We also have a list of bryophyte species observed by E C Wallace in Selsdon Wood on 14th October 1977 in the Penry-Jones booklet (see the full reference at the top of this page) and Mogens did a splendid job of combining the two lists. These show some overlap, but also many differences. Some changes might have taken place in the area, but another reason for many of the differences between Wallace's list and Mogen's is probably, that neither of them represent very detailed surveys.

Thecomplete list of Non Flowering plants can be downloaded from here and is shown below in sections with photographs of those in black text appearing in the image gallery. Most of these were taken by Mogens on his visits but our own older photographs are also included - now correctly named. These for the most part duplicate those taken by Mogens but also include one earlier FSW photograph.We do not have photos of those in red text.

The "Where" column gives an indication of
the type of location in which the moss is found. The various moss-species are all more or less specialized, which is one
important reason for the coexisting of so many species in an area such as Selsdon
Wood.

Photographs in the gallery below show 18 of the grasses and sedges found in
Selsdon Wood that we are able to identify ... and many more unknowns. Listed in red are a number of species which we believe can be
found here but we have not yet been able to identify. If you can find and identify any of our Unknown Grasses or find any others and send us a
photograph we would love to hear from you:-)

Species check-lists for Trees, Flowers, Non-flowering Plants and Grasses are available from the links given in each section above. We would be very interested to hear from you if you can report the location of any of the species shown in red on these and so help us to complete each list. A map showing grid references is provided to assist you.